John C. Wright's Blog, page 144

You Thought SciFi's EARTHSEA Was Bad?

hat tip to SfSignal

This is why all writers wince and weep when asked to sell our movie rights. We sell anyway, for we need the money, but it is like selling your lovely daughter through a mail order bride service to same man in a dark and far off land whom you do not know.

John DeNardo explains:

Before the 1977 Rankin And Bass production…there was this 1966 version by Gene Deitch. Originally planned as a full-length feature film before the Tolkien craze hit, a screenplay was written that took several heretical liberties with the story. Unfortunately the deal fell through with 20th Century Fox. But then, just one month before the rights were set to expire, the property value of Tolkien's work skyrocketed and Gene put together the version you see here:

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I will never again mock the conceit of an HP Lovecraft story.The idea that the long past covers unspeakable horrors, the abominations no man can contemplate without going mad, now seems perfectly reasonable to me.

I confess I am not man enough to have watches this whole thing. I started to get lightheaded about when I realized that Smaug had changed his name to Slag. Then when the princess is introduced, and goes with General Thorin Oakenshield to visit Gandalf in his tower, who consults the Great Book and degrees that the time of the Hobbit had arrived… no…. lights fading… roaring sound…. Ia! Phnaglui! Mwalgnafth!… human beings cannot fight the four dimensional, the ten dimensional, the thousand dimensional horrors! … they approach through the angles of time, you fools! Clutching scripts in nameless paws! Ah, Azathoth! …

 

 

View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.

Isaac Asimov and Relative Insanity

I was pondering Isaac Asimov's NIGHTFALL the other night, and meditating on how odd is the assumption on which it is based. The same assumption appears in a number of other Asimov stories

I will not summarize the tale, nor will I avoid spoilers, as I assume you know it (If not, rush right out and buy a copy of the Science Fiction Hall of Fame edited by Bob Silverberg, in order to repair your deficiency in Sci-Fi street cred).

According to Asimov, John W Campbell Jr prompted Asimov to write the story after discussing a Ralph Waldo Emerson quote:

If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore, and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown!

Campbell's contrariwise opinion was: "I think men would go mad."

The story itself is well-constructed as a mystery yarn, as each separate scientist, a psychologist, an archeologist, and an astronomer, discovers disturbing clues: man has an innate fear of darkness; the civilization of planet Lagash suffers regular and periodic collapses; that Lagash is a multiple star system which, only once in the thousand years, has all her suns set or eclipsed. The ending is a climax of what can only be called Lovecraftian despair: as the last light dies in the sky of a world which has never known nightfall, the scientists (going mad themselves from the horror of the darkness) see the buildings and monuments of their great city being lit afire by panicked mobs seeking some source of light in a world where no lamp has ever been invented.

Brilliant story, and all the more disturbing because it is based on an assumption never explicitly mentioned by Asimov, nor by Campbell, but which, once named, cannot be denied is present in their thoughts.

Mr Asimov enjoyed great success with this short story, and the theme is one he revisits again. In CAVES OF STEEL, for example, overpopulation on Earth requires the mass of the population to crowd into buried warrens, and the main character, as most Earthmen, having never seen the sky, are subject to agoraphobia. In THE NAKED SUN, the natives of Solaria are raised by robots and born in test tubes, and so are subject to a phobia against human contact, or even being in the same room as a living person.

In a less obvious way, even as story like 'Its Such a Nice Day' affirms the unspoken assumption, even though the story itself resolves itself differently.

In that story, in a society where all travel is done by instantaneous teleportation, a little boy discovers by accident that he enjoys walking outside. His mother, fearing for his sanity, calls in a psychologist who is something of a curmudgeon, not enamored of the impositions of allegedly useful technology into life, goes for a walk with the boy, and is dazed to see running water, beasts and butterflies, and the outside of his own house.  He tells the mother not to fret, and he joins the boy in an act of nonconformity by deciding himself to walk from time to time.

All of them are good stories, solidly built, well crafted. Let no one say otherwise.

But, like any story no matter how well built, when you get up from your comfy reading chair after  and are poking around in the fridge looking for leftovers, certain distracting thoughts must intrude. Did no one in the world of inexpensive teleportation go big-game hunting? No one hiked or biked or wanted to frolic in the flowers with a blushing maiden? No one owned a window, or had one of those calendars showing snow scenes or waterfalls? No one?

The story mentions 'Africans' who do not possess this technology, so the implication is we are dealing with an insular gated community, the suburbanites who are the subject of such scorn by lovers of progress, but (as we bend into the fridge seeing if there is a frosty can of beer left behind the ungainly open can of Spaghetti-Os ) the thought must strike us: wait. Really? They hold boot camp indoors in this world? Robots do all the outdoor maintenance work?

The same stray thoughts will perturb the placid science fiction reader at the close of any tale, merely because, once the drama and glamor of the suspension of disbelief fades, the dream seems more dreamlike. The image of a world burning itself to death while shrieking in fear at the fall of night is magnificent and terrifying. Only when you are wondering, head in the fridge, if that but of stray cheese is still good will you stop and think: wait. Did they have no mines on the world of Lagash, or miners who went underground to work them? Were there no window shutters and no bed curtains? No one ever put a bag over his head? Or closed his eyes?

Now, it is an open question in any of these stories, or any science fiction story at all, how seriously the author means for the reader to take the conceit of the story. Are we actually supposed to believe, for example, in THE SLEEPER WAKES by H.G. Wells that  mesmerism can place a man in suspended animation for decades without aging, and that compound interest on his bank account would one day consume the entire economy?

Like most yarns, I think the conceit made at the beginning of any tale of speculative fiction is something the reader takes on faith, like the conceit of a hypothetical question. The reader says tacitly, "Yes, I will accept the false-to-facts conceit of the hypo if you can spin out an entertaining yarn that keeps faith with the conceit!" For the moment the writer shows he is not keeping faith with the conceit, the story breaks like glass.

But when Campbell says "I think men would go mad" he is not spinning out a hypothetical conceit, he is criticizing the view of human nature of Emerson.

Campbell is backhanding what he sees as a saccharine piety in Emerson. Campbell thinks man is not, after all, a rational animal, but is the product of the evolution and environment of his birth and upbringing. Man is not the crown of creation, but a blind by-product of atomic and electrochemical forces in motion since the Big Bang. Man is plastic.

Any man who believes in God, who believes Man is made in the image of God, thinks man has a human nature, and, absent the disaster of Eden, a permanent nature.

This is blasphemy to the the zealous technocrat who preaches Better Living Through Technology, of which John W Campbell Jr was not merely an exemplar but a paragon. Nothing was clearer in his editorial policy than his thought that Man should conquer nature, and put the stars is his grasp and the future under his feet, through Yankee ingenuity, elbow grease, mother wit, grit and the occasional flash of genius, and working that slipstick.

Tales of techno-optimism take progress for the driver of the theme, and anything commonly thought to impede progress becomes what the lazy (or efficient) writer will wrap in the cloak of the antagonist.

This is more clear in Heinlein than in Asimov or Clarke, perhaps because he was a more efficient (or lazier) writer than Asimov, and more often had recourse to lazy stereotypes. The stereotyped foes of progress include the folly of the common man (or "chumps" as Michael Valentine Smith calls us); of religious leaders (who range from gross hucksters like Foster to scary theocrats like Nehemiah Scudder); or of bureaucrats or politicians or high-ranking military officers. (Indeed, the only bureaucrat on the whole canon of Heinlein's work I can call sympathetic is Mr Kiku, the undersecretary of Spatial Affairs,  from STAR BEAST).

However, Isaac Asimov and Arthur C Clarke have their share of two-dimensional stereotypes fitting these categories. They don't like commoners, godbotherers, and politicos.

Anyone who thinks the ills of Man are permanent, and the institutions (traditions of the commoners, faith of the godbotherers, laws and wars of the politicos) is a foe him who thinks the ills of man can be solved by a shiny new panacea.

There are exceptions, to be sure. I am thinking of THE BLUE PRINCE by Jack Vance, which contains the most bald-faced denunciation of any misgivings Caucasians owe conquered and displaced natives I have ever read. STARSHIP TROOPERS likewise announces the powerful theme that there will always be war, and therefore one must always be ready to fight it.

The Campbell brand of techno-optimism faded sharply in the late 60′s, but, oddly enough, the underlying assumptions did not fade in the popular mind, but took deeper root, until they seemed not assumptions but eternal truths.

One such assumption that hardened into an allegedly eternal truth is that human nature is infinitely plastic. Men are malleable. What is wrong in man can be fixed.

Human Nature, if it were only infinitely malleable, can be cured through Yankee ingenuity, elbow grease, mother wit, grit and the occasional flash of genius, and working that slipstick: such is the optimistic cry echoing through too much modern writing, both science fiction and writing that perhaps does not realize it is science fiction, or rather, pure fantasy.

Stately baldly, the conceit is absurd. The same technician who cannot free my computer of spam is going to reach into my infinitely more complex human brain and cure my various and vicious addictions to pride, envy, greed, sloth, malice, ire and lust? Really? Some clever new method of counting votes or deciding civil broils will curb the ambitions of demagogues and dictators, and sooth the deep seating malice of ancient wrongs?

Step aside, if you can, dear reader, from Campbell's simplistic BF Skinner assumptions about what drives men mad.

Think instead of men born blind who are, through some miracle or miracle of science, cured. Are they driven mad by their first sight of stars? Or think of some mountain villager who has never seen the sea. Is he driven mad at his first sight of the ocean? Or think of someone who has never been underground. Is he certain to be bereft of his wits the moment he realized a cave roof is above him?

Do not get me wrong. I am not claiming that there are no agoraphobes or thalassaphobes or claustrophobes. I am not claiming a man who never saw rainfall in his life would not be frightened by a storm. But would he go mad? If you say he would, what does that say about your faith in the sanity of your fellow man, or of you yourself?

The conceit that the flaws innate in human nature can be cured by human ingenuity is as absurd as Campbell's smirking backhanded slap at Emerson. What does it say about the techno-optimism of Campbell that he thinks a man would not be awed and full of wonder and touched with an intimation of the divine at his first sight of stars?

Now, as a story conceit, the malleability of human nature is of prime interest to the science fiction reader. How much indeed can be changed if our technology changes, or our laws, manners and customs?

I suggest that any story addressing that theme is science fiction, and that science fiction is not simply confined to those relatively few stories that propose all things in man's nature are subject to change.

Can any creature who is not awed at the sight of stars really be called a human being?

View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.

Grognardia's The Christianity of Early Gaming

I had written before about the trope of the Crystal Dragon Jesus that appears in too much modern fantasy and anime set in the Middle Ages or a milieu meant to be evocative of it.

In the pages of WELL AT THE WORLD'S END by Morris, at the dawn of modern fantasy, the clerics are clearly Christian clerics of the Roman Catholic Church.

During the high period of Pulp fantasy, there is no hint of such a thing. Crystal Dragon Jesus is not found in the adventures of Conan the Barbarian or Jirel of Joiry or Elric of Melnibone.

The high noon of modern fantasy, THE LORD OF THE RINGS of JRR Tolkien was set in a world meant to be evocative of Beowulf, the pre-Christian North, albeit with parallels to the fallen Roman empire seen in the lost and sundered kingdoms of Numenor, and the siege of Constantinople by the Turk seen in the battle with Minas Tirith.  But there are no monks, nuns, bishops, hermits, pilgrims nor crusaders in Middle Earth, and no one drives back a Nazgul with a crucifix.

By the time Jack Vance wrote his LYONESSE (which may be the dusk of modern fantasy, since I have read nothing since then to compare) Brother Umphred is again a Roman Catholic cleric, albeit, as are all men of the cloth in any Jack Vance story, an unregenerate vermin with no redeeming characteristics whatsoever.

The trope is common in modern fantasy to have all the trappings of Catholic hierarchy, just with no Jesus at the head. What I had not previously pondered was where this trope originates. Where does it come from?

Over at Grognardia, James Maliszewski, in an article written in 2008 points out that Gary Gygax may have been the big influence creating the trope.

… the cleric owes the better part of its existence to Hammer horror films, but, if you read OD&D, you can see that the class quickly evolved beyond its origins as a mere vampire hunter-cum-medic. The influence of historical medieval wargaming on the game shouldn't be overlooked. Everyone remembers Chainmail because of its Fantasy Supplement, but Jeff Perren and Gary Gygax didn't write these rules in order to facilitate miniatures battles between dragons and elves but instead to recreate the warfare and technology of the European Middle Ages. Gygax, by his own account, was very keen on medieval history, at least on the military side of things (no doubt the source of his pole arm-philia). Given this, is it any wonder that the armored, mace-wielding cleric bears a strong resemblance to the religious knights of the Crusades?

If you read OD&D carefully, you soon notice that a lot of the paraphernalia associated with clerics has Christian origins. The equipment list, for example, includes wooden and silver crosses, not the "holy symbols" of AD&D and later editions (Interestingly, there are no crucifixes, which I think is significant). The cleric's level titles include a number of specifically Christian terms (vicar, curate, and bishop). The illustrations of clerics in OD&D — and even early AD&D — always show them dressed in obviously Christian priestly garb. And of course many of the cleric's spells draw on Christian (and Jewish) religious writings and folklore. Indeed, the cleric's focus on defense and protection spells is, I think, more evidence of the Christian origins of the class. What's even more telling is the fact, even as late as Eldritch Wizardry, there are few (if any) explicit references to gods in OD&D. There's much talk of demons, devils,and, tellingly, saints, but gods aren't much talked about until Supplement IV's release in 1976.

I once asked Gary Gygax directly about the question of why this was so and he explained that he felt it unseemly to include anything too explicitly Christian in a mere game, even if he assumed a kind of quasi-Christian or crypto-Christian underpinning for the whole thing. This is also why his demons and devils used somewhat obscure names rather than very familiar ones. All the old school love for statting up Satan/Lucifer was something Gary didn't feel was proper. It's the same reason why, even in late AD&D, we get planetars, solars, and devas but never "angels." Interestingly, the original Blackmoor campaign, as I understand it, had a Church, complete with a hierarchy, but no named gods. Again — and someone can correct me if I'm mistaken on this — there's an assumption of a quasi-Christianity lurking in the background.

My comment:

Kudos to anyone coining the term pole arm-philia to describe Gary Gygax. To this day, I know the difference between a Ranseur, a Glaive-Guisarm, and a Bifork due to D&D.

When I first became aware, as a child, that there were Christian television preachers denouncing D&D for its alleged Satanist influences, I was appalled. To this day, I wonder if it was not their Christian dislike of the occult that prompted the outcry, but, rather, their Protestant dislike of Catholicism.

D&D take place in a thoroughly Catholic milieu, although, to be sure, Gygax throws in all the elements from Tolkien's Middle Earth and Jack Vance's Dying Earth, as well as the kitchen sink:

The Lawful Good hierarchy is the Roman Catholic Church, the Paladins work for Charlemagne in Paris; Lawful Evil are the Paynims who serve the Sultan raiding from the South; Chaotic Evil are the Vikings raiding from the North; the Rangers work for Aragorn son of Arathorn, who is the one remaining heir to the Holy Roman Empire; and the various witches and magic-users worship and serve the Old Gods of Olympus, or the new devils of Hell, and the druids worship Epona and their pagan gods. Elves inhabit the Black Forest of Germany, where no man goes, and Dwarves live in Switzerland and provide a bodyguard for the Pope. Thieves all come from the Court of Miracles in Paris or Lankhmar, which might as well be Alexandria or Byzantium. And monks, um, came back in large numbers from China along the Silk Road with Marco Polo. The only thing D&D does not propose is that Magic Users are despised like Jews in the Middle Ages, courted by kings as necessary, or protected by the Church, but subject to popular outrage — but that would be a detail added, if he chose, by the dungeon master.

To me, it sounds as if Gygax wanted to include as much of Medieval flavor as he could without actually making his game set in the real Middle Ages. Medieval flavor means kings who are not absolute monarchs and an international Church with considerable power and prestige, and the ruins of a once-great civilization still around.

The only element missing in Gygax, which I take to be a sine qua non of the real Middle Ages, was a certain degree of respect paid to the Greek Emperor, or, later, the Holy Roman Emperor, as the legitimate heir, if in name only, to the Roman power and authority. The political theory of the Middle Ages was not nationalism but what we would now call one-world-government, or Imperialism.

Mr Maliszewski does not say outright, but it sounds as if Gygax was too respectful of Christianity, or of his customer's feelings, to include Christian hierarchy by name in his game. Read the article for yourself, and decide.

AND FOR YOUR FURTHER READING PLEASURE:

Over at the Steampunk scholar, Gotthammer has a few thoughts about the curious absence of Christianity or Christmas in most Steampunk literature. The oddness of the absence is peculiar because the Victorian Era was one of the most deeply and openly religious in history. It would be like setting a bunch of Pilgrim-themed novels in Massachusetts Bay colony, with the characters all in broadcloth with buckles on their hats, but not mentioning Puritan Christianity.

View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.

Gronardia's The Christianity of Early Gaming

I had written before about the trope of the Crystal Dragon Jesus that appears in too much modern fantasy and anime set in the Middle Ages or a milieu meant to be evocative of it.

In the pages of WELL AT THE WORLD'S END by Morris, at the dawn of modern fantasy, the clerics are clearly Christian clerics of the Roman Catholic Church.

During the high period of Pulp fantasy, there is no hint of such a thing. Crystal Dragon Jesus is not found in the adventures of Conan the Barbarian or Jirel of Joiry or Elric of Melnibone.

The high noon of modern fantasy, THE LORD OF THE RINGS of JRR Tolkien was set in a world meant to be evocative of Beowulf, the pre-Christian North, albeit with parallels to the fallen Roman empire seen in the lost and sundered kingdoms of Numenor, and the siege of Constantinople by the Turk seen in the battle with Minas Tirith.  But there are no monks, nuns, bishops, hermits, pilgrims nor crusaders in Middle Earth, and no one drives back a Nazgul with a crucifix.

By the time Jack Vance wrote his LYONESSE (which may be the dusk of modern fantasy, since I have read nothing since then to compare) Brother Umphred is again a Roman Catholic cleric, albeit, as are all men of the cloth in any Jack Vance story, an unregenerate vermin with no redeeming characteristics whatsoever.

The trope is common in modern fantasy to have all the trappings of Catholic hierarchy, just with no Jesus at the head. What I had not previously pondered was where this trope originates. Where does it come from?

Over at Grognardia, James Maliszewski, in an article written in 2008 points out that Gary Gygax may have been the big influence creating the trope.

… the cleric owes the better part of its existence to Hammer horror films, but, if you read OD&D, you can see that the class quickly evolved beyond its origins as a mere vampire hunter-cum-medic. The influence of historical medieval wargaming on the game shouldn't be overlooked. Everyone remembers Chainmail because of its Fantasy Supplement, but Jeff Perren and Gary Gygax didn't write these rules in order to facilitate miniatures battles between dragons and elves but instead to recreate the warfare and technology of the European Middle Ages. Gygax, by his own account, was very keen on medieval history, at least on the military side of things (no doubt the source of his pole arm-philia). Given this, is it any wonder that the armored, mace-wielding cleric bears a strong resemblance to the religious knights of the Crusades?

If you read OD&D carefully, you soon notice that a lot of the paraphernalia associated with clerics has Christian origins. The equipment list, for example, includes wooden and silver crosses, not the "holy symbols" of AD&D and later editions (Interestingly, there are no crucifixes, which I think is significant). The cleric's level titles include a number of specifically Christian terms (vicar, curate, and bishop). The illustrations of clerics in OD&D — and even early AD&D — always show them dressed in obviously Christian priestly garb. And of course many of the cleric's spells draw on Christian (and Jewish) religious writings and folklore. Indeed, the cleric's focus on defense and protection spells is, I think, more evidence of the Christian origins of the class. What's even more telling is the fact, even as late as Eldritch Wizardry, there are few (if any) explicit references to gods in OD&D. There's much talk of demons, devils,and, tellingly, saints, but gods aren't much talked about until Supplement IV's release in 1976.

I once asked Gary Gygax directly about the question of why this was so and he explained that he felt it unseemly to include anything too explicitly Christian in a mere game, even if he assumed a kind of quasi-Christian or crypto-Christian underpinning for the whole thing. This is also why his demons and devils used somewhat obscure names rather than very familiar ones. All the old school love for statting up Satan/Lucifer was something Gary didn't feel was proper. It's the same reason why, even in late AD&D, we get planetars, solars, and devas but never "angels." Interestingly, the original Blackmoor campaign, as I understand it, had a Church, complete with a hierarchy, but no named gods. Again — and someone can correct me if I'm mistaken on this — there's an assumption of a quasi-Christianity lurking in the background.

My comment:

Kudos to anyone coining the term pole arm-philia to describe Gary Gygax. To this day, I know the difference between a Ranseur, a Glaive-Guisarm, and a Bifork due to D&D.

When I first became aware, as a child, that there were Christian television preachers denouncing D&D for its alleged Satanist influences, I was appalled. To this day, I wonder if it was not their Christian dislike of the occult that prompted the outcry, but, rather, their Protestant dislike of Catholicism.

D&D take place in a thoroughly Catholic milieu, although, to be sure, Gygax throws in all the elements from Tolkien's Middle Earth and Jack Vance's Dying Earth, as well as the kitchen sink:

The Lawful Good hierarchy is the Roman Catholic Church, the Paladins work for Charlemagne in Paris; Lawful Evil are the Paynims who serve the Sultan raiding from the South; Chaotic Evil are the Vikings raiding from the North; the Rangers work for Aragorn son of Arathorn, who is the one remaining heir to the Holy Roman Empire; and the various witches and magic-users worship and serve the Old Gods of Olympus, or the new devils of Hell, and the druids worship Epona and their pagan gods. Elves inhabit the Black Forest of Germany, where no man goes, and Dwarves live in Switzerland and provide a bodyguard for the Pope. Thieves all come from the Court of Miracles in Paris or Lankhmar, which might as well be Alexandria or Byzantium. And monks, um, came back in large numbers from China along the Silk Road with Marco Polo. The only thing D&D does not propose is that Magic Users are despised like Jews in the Middle Ages, courted by kings as necessary, or protected by the Church, but subject to popular outrage — but that would be a detail added, if he chose, by the dungeon master.

To me, it sounds as if Gygax wanted to include as much of Medieval flavor as he could without actually making his game set in the real Middle Ages. Medieval flavor means kings who are not absolute monarchs and an international Church with considerable power and prestige, and the ruins of a once-great civilization still around.

The only element missing in Gygax, which I take to be a sine qua non of the real Middle Ages, was a certain degree of respect paid to the Greek Emperor, or, later, the Holy Roman Emperor, as the legitimate heir, if in name only, to the Roman power and authority. The political theory of the Middle Ages was not nationalism but what we would now call one-world-government, or Imperialism.

Mr Maliszewski does not say outright, but it sounds as if Gygax was too respectful of Christianity, or of his customer's feelings, to include Christian hierarchy by name in his game. Read the article for yourself, and decide.

AND FOR YOUR FURTHER READING PLEASURE:

Over at the Steampunk scholar, Gotthammer has a few thoughts about the curious absence of Christianity or Christmas in most Steampunk literature. The oddness of the absence is peculiar because the Victorian Era was one of the most deeply and openly religious in history. It would be like setting a bunch of Pilgrim-themed novels in Massachusetts Bay colony, with the characters all in broadcloth with buckles on their hats, but not mentioning Puritan Christianity.

View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.

The First Wise Crack

One of the few people on the Internet with a name rather than a handle, Gail Finke, writes:

I'm not familiar with Satanists, but what you say is true for the so-called pagans I've know and whose works I've read. They are not actually pagans. They don't actually believe in any of the spirits/goddesses/etc., they just think they are cool and a nice, "spiritual" way to look at the world. One can argue that the REAL pagans didn't actually believe any of that stuff either, which I think is likely true. But their outlook on the world was completely different. The main things modern people who call themselves pagan do seem to believe are typical New Age stuff — you can attract good things by refusing to think of bad ones, etc. Very much a "me and the Universe, and I'm pretty in with the universe" type of thing. Very self-directed.

My comment:

I know a lot of witches — more than I know Christians — and their profile matches what you describe.

Indeed, in the long story of my conversion, the first incident, the first crack of wisdom in the invincible wall of my atheism, was the thought that Christians were not the most absurd imaginable religious folly.

That crack appeared when I was talking to my best friend and college chum Willy the Witch one day, and the topic turned to metaphysics. I asked him if he believed in life after death, and found out that he did not really have a strong opinion one way or the other. (He may have since pondered the question and come to a conclusion, but at the time, he had no answer.) I asked a few other questions about religious topics, as whether the gods punish sin, or how it is best to live. Again, his faith in the pagan gods was curiously blank.

I realized that he was not a pagan, but (as he claimed to be) a Wiccan, a witch, one of the wisecraft.

To him, the spiritual world was just another material world, occupied by forces and energies to be manipulated to serve the will of the wizard. He did not say prayers, he cast spells, that is, he did not supplicate the gods, but cajoled or commanded them. If he meditated, this was done as a discipline the way a martial artist might do it.

He explained (if I understood the explanation — perhaps I did not) that the gods were simply masks that the magician applied to the forces of the otherworld, and if addressed by those names, would act in the way the personalities associated with those names would act. Thor represented a different form of the archetype of the storm-god than Zeus, for example a warrior and troll-slayer rather than a king. Again, perhaps what he meant was more subtle than what my atheist brain could absorb, but it sounded like he did not believe his gods were real, but that as useful fictions, the god could be used to trigger real supernal powers into acting in the world, they way a lightning rod can call lighting.

But the idea of a pagan who did not really believe in the pagan gods was staggering to me.

Don't get me wrong–my friend is deadly serious about his religion or his craft, or whatever you want to call it. He has devoted his life to it. Every wall and corner of his house contains some form of bric-a-brac or hanging mask or image or idol to one daimon or diva or another.He married a nice Witch woman and has born a fine Warlock son, who is obedient to his parents. They take their traditions and gods seriously.

But his opinion of the nature of the reality of his traditions and god, what a philosopher would call his ontology, is radically different, and, to my mind, radically inferior, to the ontology of a Christian.

To him, magic was a technology.

(I say "was" because, and I wish to emphasize, I am discussing a discussion I had with a college boy. William is in his middle age by now.)

The metaphysics of this technology did not concern him. His attitude was pragmatic: whatever rites and rituals worked, worked, and no overarching theory was needed to explain why.

I realized that my hated enemies the Christians, for all their faults and hypocrisies and absurdities and enormities, at least had a set of arguable theological, moral, and metaphysical beliefs. Even the most unlettered Christian would be able to answer if I asked him whether there was or was not a Last Judgment and a Ten Commandments, a moral order to the universe and an eschatology.  At that time, I thought what the Christians thought was wrong, ludicrously wrong, deadly wrong; but at least they had a ready answer if someone asked them about life after death, or whether fornication was a sin.

One may see in Christians the paradox of Saint George, warrior saints following gentle Jesus; but one never sees the paradox of lesbians praying to chaste Diana, the virgin goddess, to bless their marriage rites. I would never treat Diana with such arrogant disrespect, and I, as a Christian, think Diana is a damned fallen angel, whose nature I do not get a vote on. Even as an atheist, I thought she was a real literary or mythic figure whose nature was one I did not get to change to suit myself, ignoring the votes of tradition.

To them, it is not disrespect. Diana is only as "real" as they want her to be. The virginal chastity that brutally slew Actaeon is an optional characteristic, in the same way that, to the modern mind, one's sex is an optional characteristic.

Christians think God is not only real, but absolute, the necessary being, the source of reality, like a light that shines into the cosmos and creates it. The pagan thinks the universe is a chaotic mystery, whose origins are obscure and whose ultimate ends are unknown, if indeed it has an end and is not merely an endless return, a cycle of cycles, and within that chaos the gods are thrown together for a time by chance or fate, brighter and higher beings than mortal men, but creatures like him, younger than the world and not makers of it.

What I sensed dimly in my conversation with my friend, albeit I did not have the vocabulary to put it into words, and what repelled me, was not his ancient devotion to obscure and occult mysteries, it was his very modern, nay, his postmodern belief that reality was something he got to decide, that the gods themselves were merely masks he could command the powers of the universe to wear.  What repelled me was his nihilism, the belief that there is no absolute truth, or that, if there is, we owe it no loyalty.

Now, dear reader, you may not think it much that I came to the opinion that the Christians were not the absolutely worst and most foolish and evil mass of self-deluded dupes and madmen in the universe, but, keep in mind, that for the truly zealous and devout atheist, the fundamentalist atheist, any admission that Christianity has any merit at all, takes it out of the category of being condemned, and puts it back on trial.

You see the difference? If someone is dead and damned, they are beyond hope or prayer. If someone is alive, however, they are not yet damned, and their good acts and bad must be judged. This small crack was enough that my philosopher's sense of honor required of me to judge the Christians by the evidence. The Christian ideas ceased being dead and damned to me.

The next crack was not for many, many years after.

View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.

Fresh from Radio Derb

This is from the latest radio address of Mr John Debyshire, whom I once respected as a stalwart Conservative writer, and whose books I perchased:

The first thing you notice about Rick Santorum is his Christian faith. That's by his own design: he pushes it right out at you. The first thing he did in his thank-you speech Tuesday night was quote C.S. Lewis, a writer whom American Christians believe to have been a theologian, while Lewis's own fellow-countryment thought he was a literary critic. My own opinion on that issue is that Lewis missed his calling; he was by nature a writer of verses for the Hallmark Greeting Card Company. Leaving that aside, and leaving aside also the inexplicable fact that very few of Lewis's American followers seem to want to follow the old boy into the Anglican Church — Santorum for example being a Roman Catholic — there is no doubt that the ex-senator from Pennsylvania puts his faith up front and center.

I have no problem with anyone being a Christian. I used to be one myself.

Suuure!  "… and some of my best friends are Negroes. I am not prejudiced against them. It is just that they smell funny."

I do, however, have mild reservations about politicians who trundle their faith around front of them like a supermarket shopping cart.

"I do have mild reservations against Negroes when they try to act Black. It is uppity. Darkies should know their place."

For one thing, it's un-Christian. Jesus of Nazareth, though he sometimes contradicted himself on this, as on many other points, seems on the whole to have favored a modest and private approach to worship. He certainly didn't approve of ostentation in religious observance.

I love it when Antichristians condescendingly lecture Christians on what Christ said and how to interpret it. It is like Denethor getting advice on wise principles of how to govern Gondor from Sauron the Great, or, to use a less geeky example, Iago lecturing Othello on how to have a happy marriage, or the serpent lecturing Eve on how to be an obedient wife to Adam.

For another thing, ostentatious religiosity doesn't play well in American politics, even among Christians, even among conservatives. We — we American conservatives — like our presidents to be Christian, but we don't want to hear about it all the time — or, really, any of the time, other than at moments of national crisis.

Heh. Psychological projection. True it may be of Derbyshire, but not true of any conservatives I know.

The two greatest conservative presidents of the 20th century, Calvin Coolidge and Ronald Reagan, were both Christians, but neither of them beat the electorate over the head with it. Neither, in fact, was a regular church-goer. The most deeply, openly, ostentatiously religious of recent presidents was Jimmy Carter. How'd that work out?And the Jimmy Carter case illustrates a problem with intense religiosity in politics, namely that it's not a good fit for fiscal, constitutional and geostrategic conservatism. Jimmy Carter made that perfectly plain, but it can be seen too in the case of Mike Huckabee, who was, to repeat myself repeating my 2008 observation, a big-government populist. It can be seen for that matter in George W. Bush, the guy who said that, quote, "When someone is hurting, government has got to move" — possibly justifiable on theological grounds, but utterly antithetical to the conservative spirit of restraint in government.

With Santorum there is also the Catholic factor to be weighed. It is of course possible for a devout Catholic to be a principled conservative — the founder of National Review was an outstanding example. Today's Catholic hierarchy is, however, overwhelmingly left-wing. Outside the narrow scope of purely doctrinal issues and those issues closely related thereto — abortion and euthanasia, for instance — outside that narrow zone, on all other social and political issues the Church is well out on the political left. On wealth redistribution, on immigration and national sovereignty, on globalization, on welfare, on the death penalty, on Second Amendment rights, the Catholic Church is more liberal than Teddy Kennedy, or Nancy Pelosi, or Joe Biden, to name just three of its congregants. Check out Benedict XVI's 2009 encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, where he calls for world government.

An individual Catholic might of course interpret scripture and doctrine differently from the hierarchy, but he is leaning into a headwind when he does so. In fact, he is courting excommunication: This is, after all, a church that emphasizes obedience and authority.

Bottom line on this: A President Rick Santorum would likely be another compassionate conservative, squandering the nation's wealth on extravagant new welfare schemes, leaving the nation's borders wide open, launching missionary wars on borrowed money to bring light to the heathen. Another George W. Bush: or another Mike Huckabee, if you like.

My comment: Having lost his religion, Derb has lost his mind.

I think the insanity of criticizing conservative candidates on the grounds that Catholics have difficulty being conservative, that CS Lewis was a writer on the level of a greeting card sentimentalist, and that Jesus was not ostentatiously religious (was a good Roman citizen, who dressed and acted so that no one could detect He was Jewish? Or that He was God?) speaks for itself. The man just said in public that JESUS CHRIST was modest about his religious faith, and did not rub anyone's nose in it.

Atheism is like AIDS: it robs you of the ability to repel invading viruses, philosophical or mental, by crippling the spiritual version of your immune system.

Myself, who has not been following politics closely, had no idea until I read this that Santorum was a Catholic. I was going to vote for him because he was not Mitt Romney.

(No offense to any Romney supporters, but I take him to be a softline semi-conservative candidate along the lines of Bob Dole or John McCain, practically the only candidate in the GOP who, if nominated, could not beat Obama.)

Now I am sure to vote for him because he is not John Derbyshire.

View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.

"Seid Bereit" from Disney's DER KOENIG DER LOWEN

And now, for your listening pleasure, and to creep the bejesus out of any of you who still have nightmares about World War Two, Walt Disney would like to present a musical number:

The Big Villain Number from LION KING in German. Every villain should get a big musical number.

Think of how much more impressive Darth Vader would have been had only he sung an aria in a minor key, backed by trumpets and drums, or if Sauron the Great had sung the inscription on the One Ring in the Black Speech of Mordor, perhaps with a techno beat and screaming guitars.

Absurd, you say? Impossible? But Don Juan has a big end number, literally the end, as he defies heaven to the very last.

Oh my goodness. I was just kidding. There actually IS a song of Sauron the Great singing the inscription on the One Ring. You can find anything on the Internet. Thank you, Al Gore!

(The song is "A New Power is Rising" by the group Summoning)

View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.

More Reviewer Praise for COUNT TO A TRILLION

This review come out this week from Rowan Kaiser :

http://www.avclub.com/articles/john-c-wright-count-to-a-trillion,67149/

John C. Wright also frames the novel as a discussion of the role of science fiction and scientific ideals. The book opens with Menelaus becoming inspired by watching a Star Trek-like cartoon, where racism and sexism have been eliminated by the pursuit of knowledge, and the show's heroic patriarch always finds ways for good to triumph over evil. These dreams of a better future speak directly to the power of science fiction, but in spite of Menelaus' beliefs, the future isn't better. He grows up a world where Darwinism has become a dogmatic religion, and racism and religious wars have led to a "jihad" virus that wipes out much of the human race before a failed global-warming countermeasure freezes the disease. The world Menelaus returns to after more than a century between the stars isn't much better, as a cabal of his fellow space-travelers have seized the planet and operate it as an aristocracy for their benefit. It's never entirely clear whether Count To A Trillion is deliberately subverting its protagonist's ideals, or if it believes they've never been implemented, but the book's lack of thematic resolution is one of its charms.

Wright moves breathlessly from one exciting idea to the next, using science fiction to examine the biggest ideas he can. On one page, he might discuss the need for and possibility of "post-human" evolution, while the next deals with the political implications of widespread, intentional social change. The book's excitement and thematic ambition are reminiscent of novels like Dan Simmons' Ilium, although Count To A Trillion doesn't fully reach the same highs. Characterization of anyone but Menelaus tends to fall by the wayside, and the book leans too heavily on its pulp roots when it makes its only female characters a mother and a princess. But it's hard to argue too much with the book's exhilaration. It's about big ideas and questions without answer, but it's also in love with how wonderfully science fiction can engage with those big ideas.

View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.

Lady's Day

Here on the Eleventh Day of Christmas, which is either a day for eleven lady's dancing, or the memorial to Saint John Neumann, allow me to join in the traditional celebration of arguing over the Internets about the pagan origins of Christmas.

Short answer: Bogus. The early Christians were not trying to sneak pagan ceremonies into the early Church. They were more zealous about keeping the faith pure, and as it had been passed along by the Apostles, than any generation since, as far as I can tell. It is a sad commentary on the world that their success in doing so is commonly and routinely insulted by younger denominations, who assume all these early Church Fathers were traitors to the faith rather than martyrs and witnesses to it.

But, on to the scholarly nitpicking! No, it is too much effort. I will merely quote: http://www.churchyear.net/annunciation.html

Scholars are not completely sure whether the date of the Annunciation influenced the date of Christmas, or vice-versa.

Before the Church adopted fixed days of celebration, early Christians speculated on the dates of major events in Jesus' life. Second-century Latin Christians in Rome and North Africa tried to find the day in which Jesus died. By the time of Tertullian (d. AD 225) they had concluded that he died on Friday, March 25, AD 29 (incidentally, this is an impossibility, since March 25 in the year AD 29 was not a Friday).

How does the day of Jesus' death relate to the day of his conception?

It comes from the Jewish concept of the "integral age" of the great Jewish prophets. This is the notion that the prophets of Israel died on the same dates as their birth or conception.

Therefore, if Jesus died on March 25, he was also conceived that day. The pseudo-Chrysostomic work de solstitia et aequinoctia conceptionis et nativitatis nostri Iesu Christi et Iohannis Baptistae accepts the same calculation.

St. Augustine mentions it as well. Other ancient Christians believed Jesus was conceived on March 25th for another reason: they believed (based on Jewish calculations of the period) that the creation of the world occurred that day.

Thus, it was fitting that the one who makes us new creations was conceived on the day the world was created.

For more information see here: http://www.ancient-future.net/christmasdate.html. Also see William Tighe, and The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church.

View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.

Wright's Writing Corner: Self Publishing guest post by David Marcoe

Nice guest post on Self-Publishing with lots of references at the end:

http://arhyalon.livejournal.com/219904.html

View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.